Healthy, Happy and Idle: Estimating the Health Capacity to Work at Older Ages in Germany

Abstract

After two decades of reforms that have tightened eligibility for early retirement and the generosity of social security payments, the German government has begun to turn back time and re-introduce more generous disability and early retirement benefits. Often, poor health is cited as the main reason why workers cannot work until the regular retirement age. In this chapter, we try to answer a seemingly simple question: what is the proportion of older individuals who could work in the labor market if they wanted to and if they were not limited by poor health? To answer this question, we follow two different empirical approaches with a similar logic: we estimate the link between health and labor force participation in a population whose employment patterns are or were hardly affected by the current (early) retirement incentives. Using these "pure health effects" on labor force participation to extrapolate to a population that is currently strongly affected by legislation informs us how many could not work for health reasons and how many could work. We find substantial capacity to work among the older population. We estimate that two thirds of the population would be capable of working in the labor market until they turn 70 if they wanted to.

Old-age Labor Force Participation in Germany: What Explains the Trend Reversal among Older Men? And What the Steady Increase among Women?

“…As noticed in our most recent work in this international comparison project (Jürges et al (2016), in Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World: The Capacity to Work at Older Ages), it is unclear whether this positive trend will continue in the future or not since this will depend on future changes of the public pension rules. On the one hand, the increase of eligibility age from 65 to 67 should contribute to maintain the trend, and it is likely it will also boost LFP in the 65-69 age group.…”

Social participation and self-reported health in China: evidence from Chinese middle-aged and elderly adults

“…(1) Self-reported health status (SRH) variable for H1 It is pointed out the self-reported status (SRH) is related with the objective indices of health status such as mortality, disease and functional disability, and it is shown that the SRH has moved in parallel to mortality over time (Jurges et al, 2016). Therefore, based on the previous studies (i.e.…”

Job search, transition to employment and discouragement among older unemployed welfare recipients in Germany

“…Employment at older ages has been rising since 1990th in many industrialised countries, including Germany (Börsch‐Supan & Ferrari, 2018). One of the contributing factors is dramatic gains in longevity and health (Milligan & Wise, 2015; Börsch‐Supan & Jürges, 2012) and the resulting higher work capacity of individuals (Cutler, Meara, & Richards‐Shubik, 2013; Jürges, Thiel, & Börsch‐Supan, 2016). Another factor is government policies aimed at restricting early retirement and extending statutory retirement age.…”